The filth and the fury

Teen Times: She has been nagging me about it for weeks. You know how it is, every single conversation you have meandering down the same route, ending in "when?"

Take morning time, for example.

Child (brightly): "Good morning, Mother, you slept well, I trust?"

Mother (darkly and gloweringly): "Clean it."

Or after coming home from another weary day at your summer job.

Child (wearily): "I had a load of nightmare customers again! How was your day?"

Mother (with a murderous, hungry glint in her eye): "I mean it. Clean your room this instant or I'm going to the tabloids and telling them about the miraculous new bacterial life-forms living in a surprisingly advanced civilisation on that bowl of Rice Krispies under your bed."

Child (meekly): "Yes ma'am. Yes ma'am, right after I've finished my game of Spider Solitaire on the computer. Oh come on, the organisms are hardly advanced - they haven't even developed satellite TV yet or built their own iPods. I'll do it later."

Except, that doesn't really work out, and somehow hours later you're still on the sofa watching Irish Paint Magic, and steam is coming out of your mother's ears. As you toddle off to bed for a well-earned rest, did you imagine it or did she really cackle and say "I'll get you tomorrow, my pretty"?

Ahh. First day of the weekend, a break from your hard-working slog, the time is about 8am. You stretch out in bed and incline your head slightly to see what a beautiful sunny day it is - children playing on swings, kittens gambolling in the garden.

Oh wait. It's actually 7 degrees and the hail is pelting down onto the sodden little kittens' backs.

Oh well, you think, another seven hours in bed, and it'll have cleared up enough for me to get up.

But Mammy dear has other ideas. Just as you roll over, you hear a faint, creeping footstep, which is actually more of a sticky trudge, reminding you that you hadn't quite gotten around to clearing up that Nutella and nail varnish that had been spilled on the floor.

Then a sopping wet face cloth hits you square on the face. You scream, but it's too late - she has already yanked the bedclothes off your pathetic pyjama-clad body and has left the room cackling about the pit of despair and the vortex under the bed. Unfortunately, the evil fairy effect is spoiled somewhat when she trips over a pile of magazines and lands with her head in a bowl of stale cereal. Ooops.

As the mother departs, limping slightly and threatening to call social services, you decide you may as well get up and watch TV. Unfortunately, with the first step out of bed, you turn on a hairdryer with your foot. Hmm.

Perhaps she had a point. If you cleaned out the room you could open up the vortex under the bed to tourists.

And you know, Nasa probably would be interested in the way that spilled hair gel and toothpaste combined appears to defy several laws of thermodynamics.

My room could be a tourist attraction to rival Newgrange with people queuing around the block to marvel at my scientist-confounding mess.

It could. Or I could just go back to bed.

Luíseach Nic Eoin (17) is a pupil at Scoil Chaitríona, Glasnevin, Dublin

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